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In the essays collected in Fancies versus Fads, G. K. Chesterton positions himself as an assailant of “the nonsense of the world”: a sworn enemy of fashionable doctrines and the excesses into which they lead their adherents. While sometimes dismissed as a fogeyish reactionary—an image to which he at times gleefully plays up—Chesterton emerges from these essays as a witty and perceptive critic possessed of a profound generosity of spirit. Ranging in its preoccupations from psychoanalysis and the temperance movement to child-rearing and free verse, Fancies versus Fads is a brilliant introduction to one of the most distinctive voices of twentieth-century literature.
In the essays collected in Fancies versus Fads, G. K. Chesterton positions himself as an assailant of “the nonsense of the world”: a sworn enemy of fashionable doctrines and the excesses into which they lead their adherents. While sometimes dismissed as a fogeyish reactionary—an image to which he at times gleefully plays up—Chesterton emerges from these essays as a witty and perceptive critic possessed of a profound generosity of spirit. Ranging in its preoccupations from psychoanalysis and the temperance movement to child-rearing and free verse, Fancies versus Fads is a brilliant introduction to one of the most distinctive voices of twentieth-century literature.